'Son of Bubble' Comes of Age

Remember b2blingerie.com?

I'm not entirely sure it was ever a real company, but six years ago it was, to my mind, the epitome of silliness in the last dot-com bubble: Just string together the hottest buzzword of the day (in this case, B2B) with the first word that pops into your mind (in this case, lingerie) and -- presto! -- you're a dot-com founder, even if nobody's really sure what your company does.

I've written before about what many are now calling Bubble 2.0, but what I prefer to call "Son of Bubble" because of the Hollywood horror show it suggests.

Whatever you call it, this newest bubble is finally getting big enough to show up on the radar screens of several closely read tech bloggers, suggesting that a return to tech-stock excess is closer than ever.

It all started with David Hornik, who threw a recent party in his Silicon Valley home. The gathering was crashed by people dressed in cheerleader costumes, then someone called the police to complain. The festivities were shut down by 11:30 p.m.

It sounds like a typical high school party to me, but here's what Hornik wrote on his blog: "Like a canary in the coal mine breathing its final breath, some are insisting that the gigantic, buzz-engorged TechCrunch August Capital Party that I hosted this past Friday is a sure harbinger of Bubble 2.0."